


The willow Maid and Her Moonsong on the Wind

by SC_Sinclaire



Series: Fairy Tails: Because Dragons are Good and Gender Roles Suck! [1]
Category: Erutan (The Willow Maid), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Death, Fairy Tale Style, Forests, Full Moon, Legends, Misguided humans, Other, Personification, Song Lyrics, True Love, Unhappy Ending, unusual romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 07:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SC_Sinclaire/pseuds/SC_Sinclaire
Summary: Inspired and based off of a song by the artist Erutan. This a fairy tail about a maiden of the forest and the moon that falls for her.





	The willow Maid and Her Moonsong on the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! First I want to say thanks for reading! I'm kind of new to this whole posting my stuff on the internet thing so thanks for giving me and this fic a chance. I would like to note that this story is both based off of and inspired by the song The Willow Maid sung by the artist Erutan. I 100% recommend giving it a listen, it's an incredible song. This has become the first work in a series of fairy tale style stories so keep an eye out for new additions! Without further ado here's the actual story!

The Willow Maid and Her Moonsong on the Wind  


In the very center of a forest untouched by man, save for the occasional hunter that had lost his way, there sat a magnificent and ancient willow tree. Centuries it had stood, its vibrant green branches cascading down to the forest floor obscuring its trunk and hiding its sole occupant from the eye of the casual observer.  


She had no name, though rumor in the village that sat at the edge of the forest called her the Willow Maid. It was said that she was once a girl from a far off village cursed to be bound to the willow until such a time that a man could cut down her tree and take her for his wife. Such rumors were naught but the fanciful tales told by young, hopeless romantics and boys on the cusp of adulthood desperate for a beautiful woman to call their own.  


The reality of the Willow Maid’s origins is less romantic than rumor would have you believe, but no less magical. Her brilliantly red hair that seemed to catch fire every time it was caught in the dying light of the evening sun, and her green eyes that managed to out shine the greenery of her home, served to betray her true age. Rumor had her set around nineteen years of age, but in truth she was nearly as old as the willow and older than the forest surrounding her.  


Born from the very Willow she calls home, one could claim that the Willow Maid was the heart and sprit of the forest made flesh. Such a claim would not be entirely unfounded as the forest quickly sprang up shortly after she came into being.  


She lived alone in her willow with only the small woodland animals and the whispers of the trees for company. Had she been asked she would not have said she was lonely. How could one be lonely when surrounded by so much beauty? But she felt as though something was missing. So she sang; a sweet melody that carried on the soft breeze and traveled between the rustling leaves that became the percussion keeping time with her song.  


Her song spread throughout the forest, gaining the attention of many a hunter and sparking the rumors that persist. But it was not humans whose attention she found herself craving. It was the harmony on the wind sung by the silver moonlight that filtered through the willow branches.  


For some time their songs intertwined. A wonderful, if unexpected clashing of sound. It did not take long for the Willow Maid’s beautiful, but hauntingly empty song to turn the Moon’s passing curiosity into a desperate need to know and understand this ancient woman born of the willow under the Moon’s gaze.  


The moon called to her on the wind with its low harmony hoping for her to turn their individual songs into one duet. For the Moon had known no creature as beautiful and enchanting as the woman of the willow.  


The Willow Maid knew not why the Moon had taken such an interest in her. Was the stars that shone through the night not more beautiful than she? Surely the Moon should find the twinkling brilliance of the constellations more interesting the woman of the willow rooted the earth below the vast sky? Unable, or perhaps unwilling to believe the song on the moonlight the Willow Maid continued to sing her empty song.  


The Moon was not deterred by the Willow Maid’s disbelief. It sang its song night after night and into each day long after it should have faded. It sang to the trees around her pleading them to help her see. She did not know her worth both to the forest and to the Moon above. Now that it had found her and heard her song the Moon knew she was the piece it had been missing all those millennia it had circled the earth. She did not know how lonely it was to watch the world spin around an indifferent sun while the stars where too far off for the moon to receive even the slightest bit of warmth. She did not understand that her song had stirred something within the Moon’s heart that it had long forgotten even existed.  


Though unwilling to confess it, even to herself, the Willow Maid had become increasingly fond of the Moon and its persistent song. With each passing note her disbelief dissolved until she came to truly believe the Moon’s feeling were more than a passing fancy.  


They grew to love each other deeply. The woman born of the willow upon the earth and the silvery moon that hung in the night sky like a guardian angel. Their songs no longer a clash of aimless empty emotion, but a duet of love deeper than any creature was capable of. A duet of a bond between two beings that could never be severed.  


Two full centuries the Willow Maid and her moon sang together. Their desire to be near each other was so great that on nights of the full moon the silvery rays of light came together into one solid being. The Moon was able to caress its love’s face with more than the gentle midnight breeze. The Maid was at last able to hold her love in her arms reducing the space between to nothing.  


None know when or how the rumor shifted, but soon story spread that it was not the willow that cursed the girl, but the moon itself that had bound her to the ancient tree. It was a story the moon found endlessly amusing for the story had it so very wrong. It was not the Moon that had enchanted the Maid, but the Maid that had enchanted the Moon.  
The Willow Maid found the stories unsettling. Her love was brilliant and gentle, but it did not see what humans did during the waking hours of the day. The trees did not tell it stories of forests uprooted and burned, of magnificent beasts slain in the name of shattering a curse. The Moon did not know of Man’s single-minded destruction in the name of their twisted version of true love.  


She was terrified of a human finding her tree and felling it out of a twisted sense of heroism. Yet she could not bring herself to tell the Moon of her worries. It was always so happy and gentle, always so trusting of the things around it. She could not bear to dim its shine in such a way, so she continued her song and prayed to the willow that Man would not touch the bliss she had found in the Moon and its song on the wind.  


It was in the early dawn of an autumn morning, not long before the air would grew too cold to hunt in the woods, that a young man tracked his prey through the forest, his hunting bow in hand and full quiver upon his back. He was nearly upon the doe he had been tracking since the small hours of the morning when he heard it. A sweet lilting melody on the soft breeze. His mind flitted to the rumors of his village. He had heard the stories, there was not a soul alive in his village that had not heard of the Maid bound to a willow by the Moon.  


He followed the sound, curious about the girl cursed by the Moon. He wondered what one had to do to earn such ire from a thing as gentle as the Moon. He had never believed the silly girls and their talk of love at first sight. That was until he had laid eyes upon the girl sitting among the thick willow branches and leaning against the trunk looking content as she sang almost absent mindedly. So entranced was he by her beauty he had almost missed the point at which she ceased her song. He looked up at her from a ring of red toadstools and said,  


“Would you come with me maiden? Your beauty is too great to hide in thy willow bed.”  
She looked at him serenely, though her heart raced, and only shook her head.  


“See me now, a ray of light in the moondance. I cannot leave this place. You heard me, a strain of song in the forest. Don’t ask me to follow where you lead.”  


The young man left, rejection igniting a determination deep in his heart. Surely it was the curse that caused her to turn him away. He muttered a promise to return so lowly that not even the trees could hear him.  


The Maid was afraid of what the young man was capable of. She told the Moon of all that had transpired and spoke of her worries around the man. The Moon too was concerned, for none had found its love’s willow before. Perhaps the man would not return and they would worry for nothing, but the Moon was unwilling to count upon a human giving up so easily.  


The Maid would need wait only two more nights for the full moon to rise. They had a plan. To combine the magic of the forest with the magic of the silver moon to move the Maid’s willow deep into the forest where no man had ever tread. There she would be safe from rumor and legend.  


The next day, traveling though the pre-dawn light clad in his finest coat a flower in hand picked from the meadow outside his village, the young man made his way back to the willow. He had fallen for the girl with hair like fire and eyes of emerald. He hoped to win her favor and free her from the curse that bade her to reject him.  


She wrapped herself in the beauty of the green willow branches and her love’s far off song as the trees spoke of the man’s approach. The young man marveled at the girl he had fallen so hard for. He stood under the willow and offered her his flower of golden petals, its bright colors at once a part of and out of place in the forest.  


“Girl my heart you’ve captured. Take this bloom that I may become your groom.”  
She offered him a small peaceful smile and shook her head. She told him she’d with him never, not near, nor far, nor soon.  


“See me? A ray of light on the moondance? I cannot leave this place. Hear me? A stain of song though the forest? Don’t ask me to follow where you lead.”  


The man left filled with a greater determination than before. He would break this accursed spell and have her for his own. At home he bartered with the blacksmith, promising first choice of every kill he made on the hunt for the rest of his life in exchange for the best and sharpest ax.  


Neither the Maid nor the Moon knew of the man’s plans. Too in love with each other and occupied over their excitement to be together in more than song once again. The Moon worried for its love, but knew it was powerless until its full light could touch the leaves of her willow. The Moon told the maid tales of the other lands it had observed on the other side of the world.it told her of men that rode strange creatures across rolling hills made of sand. It spoke of women dancing in long flowing robes by the light it cast. It even told her of the grand structures built of solid stone housing men and women of great importance. The purpose of the stories accomplished when she had forgotten her concerns over the man and his persistence.  


In turn she told the Moon stories that the trees whispered to her. Tales of silly human conflicts and animals that took great pleasure in troubling the humans that encroached upon their territory. She told the Moon of one hunter’s respect for the forest she called home and another hunter’s respect for nothing but himself and his domesticated wolves.  


Their conversation drifted off into distant song as it did every time the Moon disappeared behind the horizon and rose for another part of the earth far away from its love in the rooted willow.  


It was not long after that the man trudged through the forest, a sharp and gleaming ax held tightly in hand. He spoke to himself as walked, the trees spreading his words to reach the ears of the willow.  


“I’ll take the green eyed fairy and she shall be my wife. With her I’ll raise my children. With her I’ll live my life.”  


The willow maid wept when she heard him say he’ll set her free. Had he only waited one more day. One night was all she prayed for. One more night to be wrapped in the soft silvery arms of her love. One more night and she would have been safe from man for centuries more.  


The man took his ax in hand and used it to cut down her ancient tree. The mighty crash of the slain willow paled when compared to the shattering of the Willow Maid’s heart. The once vibrant green branches became nothing but dust carried on the anguished breeze of the forest. With a heart heavier than stone she accepted her fate as the mighty trunk that had stood for nearly a thousand years, withered and sank into the soft soil that used to provide it life.  


“Now your willow’s fallen. Now you belong to me.”  


“Did you not see me? The ray of light on the moondance? I cannot leave this place. Did you not hear me? The strain of song in the forest? I beg you do not ask me to follow where you lead.” Her pleas fell on ears deafened by the man’s triumph. She had no choice but to follow the man out of the forest she had long called home.  


They reached the edge of the forest. Her legs grew weak with each step away from the grove where her willow once grew. She collapsed upon the earth. Her feet had walked naught but a step from the green land of her birth. There she faded into a flower that would bloom for one bright eve. Her silvered petals opened to bask in the silvery light cast by moon rising to meet its love. Her stem stretched up as high as it could go to reach the Moon and feel its love one last time before she faded away. The moon reached out to its love and cupped her petals in its soft light, its parting song equal parts sweet and broken.  


She sang to her Moon, the last song it would ever hear from the only one it had ever loved. The moon listened and wept as she told it “Goodbye my Moonsong on the wind. May you still find happiness even if it must be without me.”  


The man had sat with the flower not knowing what he had done wrong. He had cut down her tree and broke the curse, or so he had thought, until he saw her petals bloom a color the same shade as the light cast by the full moon. He watched as a being of silver light descended upon the moon’s rays and gently held the flower that had once been the woman he had thought himself in love with. He listened closely as she sang her last goodbye to the moon. He truly listened as the wind carried the moon’s anguished song through the trees.  


The stories had been wrong. She was not a girl cursed by the moon. She was an ancient being, one older than he could fathom. She had loved the moon with a love he had not known existed, and the moon loved her just the same. His heart laden with guilt he realized he could not take from the forest what was never meant to leave.


End file.
